Vid card overheated and killed my mobo

[Padawannabe]

I haven't kept up to date on hardware since the last system I built back in 2004, just before SATA drives really hit mainstream. Anyways, the fan on my video card died, the card overheated and now my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra) is toast. My wife and I just had our first child and now really isn't the best time for my system to go kaput but I guess thats the wonderful world of PCs, they die at the most inopertune time. So basically I'm looking for suggestions. I would like to keep the CPU (2.5GHz 533 FSB), the RAM (2 sticks of Corsair 512mb XMS PC2700). I don't want to buy a used board off of eBay and it looks like my board is no longer sold (atleast not by newegg or zipzoomfly). I need a good replacement mobo and vid card. Any recommendations and suggestions are greatly appreciated. As far as the mobo is concerned, I don't have SATA drives so I'd like to have ATA/133 IDE slots. Currently I've been running 3 hdd off an ATA/133 controller card and 3 optical drives. This is a bit of overkill I know so it isn't as important that I keep this config. I'll probably throw one of the drives in an older backup PC for storage and then keep only 2 of the optical drives. The mobo is where I really need recommendations. As far as the video card, I need an AGP card, nothing out of this world. I'd like to have 256mb if possible but really don't want to spend over $100 at the current time. With the baby, I really won't have as much time for PC gaming, probably won't play much of anything other than World of Warcraft. I've been looking at a Sapphire 9600XT card off newegg. Is this a decent card or should I look at another model?

Again thanks for all your help and suggestions.

P

 

[Padawannabe]

btw, here is the link to newegg for the video card I'm considering

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102600

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Board

vid card

You can look around for better deals on a 6600 or x1300pro AGP, maybe get one under $100 shipped. The board is top notch, you can always grab a cheaper Biostar or ECS that aren't as feature rich for running stock speeds too and put more towards a vid card.

 

[Padawannabe]

Awesome, thx so much for your suggestions... one question though, since this board is Intel 865 series as opposed to the old Gigabyte board that was 845, will the PC 2700 RAM work in this board? The specs say it is PC3200, will the board just scale down the memory speeds to work w/ my PC2700? My guess is yes but just want to verify before making any purchases.

Thanks again for all your help.

 

[pkrush]

I'd look around on the FS/FT forum for a video card, I often see 9800 Pro's going for around 75 bucks shipped there. Those will blow the 6600LE and x1300's out of the water. Just so you know, the amount of memory a card has doesn't really matter until it gets to 9800 Pro speeds and beyond. (so that 6600LE with 256 megs of RAM won't perform as well as a 9800 Pro 128).Yes, the PC2700 RAM will *probably* work, in theory it definitely will, but reality is sometimes different. I'm pretty sure it'll work for you though.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

The ram will be fine. The suggestion of a used card that is a more powerful gamer is a good one, just be aware that if anything goes wrong, you are out whatever you spent. EVGA and XFX have the best lifetime warrantys going. The 6600LE is a better multimedia card than anything older such as the 9 series ATI or FX series nvidia, if high def content, trailers, ect. are a consideration.